Circular Logic
Posted by drpezz on February 13, 2008
The district agreed to help us bring down class sizes for freshmen and sophomores from 31-32 to 28, which would be great. This would mean a lowering of students per day of 15-20 students for some of the English teachers. 140 students a day sounds much better to me than 160. Just for perspective, when I first arrived at this school the average Freshman English class size was 26 (and an overall average daily load of 130).
However, they told us we have to reduce the number of freshman failures first. Of course, this was one reason we asked for lower class sizes.
Here’s the oddest part of the story: the superintendent wanted to give us the staffing to reduce the class sizes, but our principal and one of the vice-principals argued not to give us the staffing until the failures go down. Can you believe that? Our own administration rallied against helping us and the kids!
My serious snarky solution is to do what the district has done until the kids got here: pass them on to the next grade no matter what their grades are. Then we get the staffing.
wetlandstom said
Screwy is a polite word for this situation. I wonder if there are any raw statistics about class sizes and pass/fail rates?
Tom
drpezz said
Every successful reorganization or program change includes class size. Nathan Hale is an excellent example in Seattle.
Culture of Failure « The Doc Is In said
[...] The two items which have been my department’s calls for assistance are class size and reading levels. However, we are told that we must improve the failure rate before we’ll get help with these two areas. [...]